In Defence of Harriet ShelleyWord文件下载.docx

1、s young daughter. This was all new to me when I heard it lately, and was told that the proofs of it were in this book, and that this books verdict is accepted in the girlscolleges of America and its view taught in their literary classes.In each of these six years multitudes of young people in our co

2、untry have arrived at the Shelley-reading age. Are these six multitudes unacquainted with this life of Shelley? Perhaps they are; indeed, one may feel pretty sure that the great bulk of them are. To these, then, Iaddress myself, in the hope that some account of this romantic historical fable and the

3、 fabulists manner of constructing and adorning it may interest them.First, as to its literary style. Our negroes in America have several ways of entertaining themselves which are not found among the whites anywhere. Among these inventions of theirs is one which is particularly popular with them. It

4、is a competition in elegant deportment. They hire a hall and bank the spectators seats in rising tiers along the two sides, leaving all the middle stretch of the floor free. A cake is provided as a prize for the winner in the competition, and a bench of experts in deportment is appointed to award it

5、. Sometimes there are as many as fifty contestants, male and female, and five hundred spectators.One at a time the contestants enter, clothed regardless of expense in what each considers the perfection of style and taste, and walk down the vacant central space and back again with that multitude of c

6、ritical eyes on them. All that the competitor knows of fine airs and graces he throws into his carriage, all that he knows of seductive expression he throws into his countenance. He may use all the helps he can devise: watch-chain to twirl with his fingers, cane to do graceful things with, snowy han

7、dkerchief to flourish and get artful effects out of, shiny new stovepipe hat to assist in his courtly bows; and the colored lady may have a fan to work up her effects with, and smile over and blush behind, and she may add other helps, according to her judgment. When the review by individual detail i

8、s over, a grand review of all the contestants in procession follows, with all the airs and graces and all the bowings and smirkings on exhibition at once, and this enables the bench of experts to make the necessary comparisons and arrive at a verdict. The successful competitor gets the prize which I

9、 have before mentioned, and an abundance of applause and envy along with it. The negroes have a name for this grave deportment-tournament; a name taken from the prize contended for.They call it a Cakewalk.This Shelley biography is a literary cake-walk. The ordinary forms of speech are absent from it

10、. All the pages, all the paragraphs, walk by sedately, elegantly, not to say mincingly, in their Sunday-best, shiny and sleek, perfumed, and with boutonnieres in their button-holes; it is rare to find even a chance sentence that has forgotten to dress. If the book wishes to tell us that Mary Godwin,

11、 child of sixteen, had known afflictions, the fact saunters forth in this nobby outfit: Mary was herself not unlearned in the lore of pain-meaning by that that she had not always traveled on asphalt; or, as some authorities would frame it, that she had been there herself, a form which, while prefera

12、ble to the books form, is still not to be recommended. If the book wishes to tell us that Harriet Shelley hired a wet-nurse, that commonplace fact gets turned into a dancing-master, who does his professional bow before us in pumps and knee-breeches, with his fiddle under one arm and his crush-hat un

13、der the other, thus:The beauty of Harriets motherly relation to her babe was marred in Shelleys eyes by the introduction into his house of a hireling nurse to whom was delegated the mothers tenderest office.This is perhaps the strangest book that has seen the light since Frankenstein. Indeed, it is

14、a Frankenstein itself; a Frankenstein with the original infirmity supplemented by a new one; a Frankenstein with the reasoning faculty wanting. Yet it believes it can reason, and is always trying. It is not content to leave a mountain of fact standing in the clear sunshine, where the simplest reader

15、 can perceive its form, its details, and its relation to the rest of the landscape, but thinks it must help him examine it and understand it; so its drifting mind settles upon it with that intent, but always with one and the same result: there is a change of temperature and the mountain is hid in a

16、fog. Every time it sets up a premise and starts to reason from it, there is a surprise in store for the reader. It is strangely nearsighted, cross-eyed, and purblind. Sometimes when a mastodon walks across the field of its vision it takes it for a rat; at other times it does not see it at all.The ma

17、terials of this biographical fable are facts, rumors, and poetry.They are connected together and harmonized by the help of suggestion, conjecture, innuendo, perversion, and semi-suppression.The fable has a distinct object in view, but this object is not acknowledged in set words. Percy Bysshe Shelle

18、y has done something which in the case of other men is called a grave crime; it must be shown that in his case it is not that, because he does not think as other men do about these things.Ought not that to be enough, if the fabulist is serious? Having proved that a crime is not a crime, was it worth

19、 while to go on and fasten the responsibility of a crime which was not a crime upon somebody else? What is the use of hunting down and holding to bitter account people who are responsible for other peoples innocent acts?Still, the fabulist thinks it a good idea to do that. In his view Shelleys first

20、 wife, Harriet, free of all offense as far as we have historical facts for guidance, must be held unforgivably responsible for her husbands innocent act in deserting her and taking up with another woman.Any one will suspect that this task has its difficulties. Any one will divine that nice work is n

21、ecessary here, cautious work, wily work, and that there is entertainment to be had in watching the magician do it.There is indeed entertainment in watching him. He arranges his facts, his rumors, and his poems on his table in full view of the house, and shows you that everything is there-no deceptio

22、n, everything fair and above board. And this is apparently true, yet there is a defect, for some of his best stock is hid in an appendix-basket behind the door, and you do not come upon it until the exhibition is over and the enchantment of your mind accomplished-as the magician thinks.There is an i

23、nsistent atmosphere of candor and fairness about this book which is engaging at first, then a little burdensome, then a trifle fatiguing, then progressively suspicious, annoying, irritating, and oppressive. It takes one some little time to find out that phrases which seem intended to guide the reade

24、r aright are there to mislead him; that phrases which seem intended to throw light are there to throw darkness;that phrases which seem intended to interpret a fact are there to misinterpret it; that phrases which seem intended to forestall prejudice are there to create it; that phrases which seem an

25、tidotes are poisons in disguise. The naked facts arrayed in the book establish Shelleys guilt in that one episode which disfigures his otherwise superlatively lofty and beautiful life; but the historians careful and methodical misinterpretation of them transfers the responsibility to the wifes shoul

26、ders as he persuades himself. The few meagre facts of Harriet Shelleys life, as furnished by the book, acquit her of offense; but by calling in the forbidden helps of rumor, gossip, conjecture, insinuation, and innuendo he destroys her character and rehabilitates Shelleys-as he believes. And in trut

27、h his unheroic work has not been barren of the results he aimed at; as witness the assertion made to me that girls in the colleges of America are taught that Harriet Shelley put a stain upon her husbands honor, and that that was what stung him into repurifying himself by deserting her and his child

28、and entering into scandalous relations with a school-girl acquaintance of his.If that assertion is true, they probably use a reduction of this work in those colleges, maybe only a sketch outlined from it. Such a thing as that could be harmful and misleading. They ought to cast it out and put the who

29、le book in its place. It would not deceive. It would not deceive the janitor.All of this book is interesting on account of the sorcerers methods and the attractiveness of some of his characters and the repulsiveness of the rest, but no part of it is so much so as are the chapters wherein he tries to

30、 think he thinks he sets forth the causes which led to Shelleys desertion of his wife in 1814.Harriet Westbrook was a school-girl sixteen years old. Shelley was teeming with advanced thought. He believed that Christianity was a degrading and selfish superstition, and he had a deep and sincere desire to rescue one of his sisters from it. Harriet was impressed by his various philosophies and looked upon him as an intellectual wonder-which indeed he was. He had an idea that she could give him valuable help in his scheme regarding his sister; therefore he asked he